Saturday, March 6, 2010

Sunday Sabbath Poetry: Li-Young Lee

I have shared from Li-Young Lee before, and it is not hard to do it again. The man's words diminish other words as child's play, quiet all of one's surroundings, create new worlds with every new line, every open-ended stanza, every tragic or beautiful twist of expectations. The poem below is from his 1990 collection, The City in Which I Love You, a gorgeous and emotionally rent five-part meditation on his family's flight from Indonesia in the late 50s, eventually arriving in the U.S. in 1964. The impact of fatherhood is felt across all of Lee's work, and no less here.

It is always a reminder of what a gift poetry is after reading someone like Li-Young Lee. I hope it is a similar experience for you.

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Arise, Go Down

By Li-Young Lee

It wasn't the bright hems of the Lord's skirtsthat brushed my face and I opened my eyesto see from a cleft in rock His backside;

it's a wasp perched on my left cheek. I keepmy eyes closed and stand perfectly stillin the garden till it leaves me alone,

not to contemplate how this centuryends and the next begins with no oneI know having seen God, but to wonder

why I get through most days unscathed, though Ilive in a time when it might be otherwise,and I grow more fatherless each day.

For years now I have come to conclusionswithout my father's help, discoveringon my own what I know, what I don't know,

and seeing how one cancels the other.I've become a scholar of cancellations.Here, I stand among my father's roses

and see that what punctures outnumbers whatconsoles, the cruel and the tender nevermake peace, though one climbs, though one descends

petal by petal to the hidden groundno one owns. I see that which is takenaway by violence or persuasion.